Features

A 27 Hour Journey

It took 27 hours of flying time for Winnie Dan-Lee Ng Yu ’74 to travel from her home in Melbourne, Australia, to Lexington for Alumni Weekend, but Yu found it well worthwhile for the chance to see her Transylvania classmates and her alma mater for the first time in 33 years.

“It is very exciting to see old friends,” Yu said. “The campus tour was quite refreshing, to see how the college is more modern and advanced now. The library is very nice.”

Yu had been back to Lexington only once since graduation—in 1976 while she was in the states for training related to her information technology career—but since retiring last year from ANZ Banking Group Ltd., she has more time for travel.

A native of Hong Kong, Yu chose Transylvania after reading a magazine article about small colleges in the United States. She had never been to America before arriving in Lexington for the beginning of classes.

“I was very homesick those first few weeks,” Yu recalls. “I actually wanted to go back home straightaway. Luckily, my host family introduced me to some friends, and I met some other Chinese students at the University of Kentucky.”

Yu soon found a home at Transy and graduated with a computer science degree, which was the basis for her IT career in Hong Kong and Australia.